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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

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Mary Jo Bang was born on October 22, 1946 in Waynesville, Missouri, and grew up in Ferguson, which is now a suburb of St. Louis. She received a BA and an MA in Sociology from Northwestern University, a BA in photography from the Polytechnic of Central London, and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University

Bang is the author of seven books of poems, including The Bride of E: Poems (Graywolf Press, 2009) and Elegy (Graywolf Press, 2007), which won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and was a 2008 New York Times Notable Book. Her first book, Apology for Want (Middlebury College, 1997), was chosen by Edward Hirsch for the 1996 Bakeless Prize.

Bang's work has been chosen three times for inclusion in the Best American Poetry series. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a "Discovery"/The Nation award, a Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and a Hodder Award from Princeton University. Her books Louise in Love (Grove Press, 2001) and Elegy both received the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award for a manuscript-in-progress.

Bang was the poetry coeditor of the Boston Review from 1995 to 2005. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where she is Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Washington University.

You Know

Mary Jo Bang, 1946

You know, don't you, what we're doing here?
The evening laid out like a beach ball gone airless.
We're watching the spectators in the bleachers.
The one in the blue shirt says, "I knew,
even as a child, that my mind was adding color
to the moment."
The one in red says, "In the dream, there was a child
batting a ball back and forth. He was chanting
that awful rhyme about time that eventually ends
with the body making a metronome motion."
By way of demonstration, he moves mechanically
side to side while making a clicking noise.
His friends look away. They all know
how a metronome goes. You and I continue to watch
because we have nothing better to do.
We wait for the inevitable next: we know the crowd
will rise to its feet when prompted and count—
one-one-hundred, two-one-hundred,
three-one-hundred—as if history were a sound
that could pry apart an ever-widening abyss
with a sea on the bottom. And it will go on like this.
The crowd will quiet when the sea reaches us.

Now we sit and play with a tiny toy
elephant that travels a taut string.
Now we are used and use in turn
each other. Our hats unravel
and that in itself is tragic.
To be lost. To have lost. Verbs
like veritable engines pulling the train
of thought forward. The hat is over-
turned and out comes a rabbit. Out